


Wandered Far Astray

by orphan_account



Series: Made for War [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk (2008), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Feels, I don’t even know how this happened but I’m enjoying it while it lasts, Logan POV, Logan feels, Suicide attempt mentioned, WIP, awkward Logan, canon confluence, especially when it’s the two-bullets-to-the-brain method, it’s a small Canada after all, memory deletion is messy, quiet Bruce, tags will be added as chapters are uploaded
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a cold road in the wild North of Canada, a lonely wolverine meets a miserable doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First, let me say that I only know the movies, not the comics. This draws mostly from Norton’s Hulk movie and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. For Logan, it’s during the fifteen years between Three Mile Island and meeting Rogue, and for Bruce it’s between Harlem and the Avengers. I would also like to note that I picture Bruce as Ruffalo!Banner in this fic, since he portrays Bruce as a troubled scientist rather than just a Hulk-in-waiting.
> 
> I write Logan with scent as his primary sense. It seems to me that’s how he functions in the movies, and, to be completely honest, it’s fun in a challenging sort of way.
> 
>  
> 
> PS: Bonus points for anyone who knows where the poem came from.

 

 

> _I made a big decision a little while ago._
> 
> _I don’t remember what it was, which prob’ly goes to show_
> 
> _That many times a simple choice can prove to be essential_
> 
> _Even though it often might appear inconsequential._
> 
> _I must have been distracted when I left my home because_
> 
> _Left or right I’m sure I went. (I wonder which it was!)_
> 
> _Anyway, I never veered: I walked in that direction_
> 
> _Utterly absorbed, it seems, in quiet introspection._
> 
> _For no reason I can think of, I’ve wandered far astray._
> 
> _And that is how I got to where I find myself today._
> 
>  
> 
>                 - Bill Watterson

* * *

 

**22 April 2005**

**3:47 PM**

**unnamed abandoned logging road**

**Yukon, Canada**

 

Logan sighed, narrowing his eyes against the wind. His motorcycle roared down the road. _Why did I decide to live all the way out there again? Oh, that’s it- privacy._ His rare rides into town always drove him into a foul mood. _All I asked for was a box of nails, not a hundred questions about my time in the Army or gossip or wild stories about how Wilbur said he saw Hulk footprints out by the lake. Next thing you know, he’ll be back to talking about Bigfoot._ It was a small town, and the dusty old lady who ran the convenience store seemed to think that all he needed was more human contact. It probably didn’t help that his lie about being an army veteran reminded her of her nephew.

_I’ve had all the human contact I need for a few lifetimes, thanks,_ he thought sarcastically. Then blinked, frustrated. Thoughts like that drifted by now and again, and Logan could never quite grasp where they came from.

Familiar trees and forest smells rushed by as he wound his way up the road. No one else lived out this way. That was, after all, the point. Four years of wandering and restless anger over his lack of memory forced Logan to rely on instinct. So far, it had led him west and north, where building a haphazard little cabin had made him the closest thing to happy he’d ever been. That he could remember, anyway.

Lately, when the loggers at the bar in town repeated their offer of a job, he’d wondered if he should take it after all. Odd jobs doing repair work didn’t pay all that well, and government work on the highway wouldn’t happen without legal identification. Even Logan got tired of hunting for dinner after enough days of rabbit stew in a row. Something about taking the logging job bothered him, though.

On the other hand, the sheer boredom of repeating this same line of thought over and over in solitude might just be enough to get him to accept the offer, if only to be distracted by something new. But new meant people and gossip and expectations and echoes of a past, echoes of a life he desperately wanted and utterly rejected in the same half-formed thought. And the shallow story he’d told them to make up for an absent past wouldn’t hold up day after day, but the idea of explaining the truth just didn’t appeal. He preferred his privacy.

Logan’s thoughts turned on this cycle a few more times before a new scent captured his attention. Something different: a man, but sour with something inhuman. A mutant, maybe. The strangeness didn’t seem right. He’d smelled mutants before, on his way west and north, and they were always odd, but it tended to fit together. This one… didn’t. The pieces of his scent didn’t match, like a bowl that was broken and put back together wrong.

One curve of the road later, the man came into view. He was naked.

Not entirely naked. He was clutching a mostly shredded thing that might be the remnants of a pair of jeans. The sour-broken man stumbled along, walking up the road. He was barefoot, dirty, and, from the scent of him, exhausted. Logan slowed to an idling roll as his bike came up beside the stranger. He didn’t look up. Didn’t even stop walking.

“Not a great day for a walk,” Logan offered. “Probably going to snow later.”

The sour-broken man kept going.

Dried sweat and maybe tears mingled with the unmistakable odor of multiple nights in the woods. Bone-deep exhaustion was clear in the slant of his shoulders. A leaf fluttered where it was caught in the mud dried into his hair. In spring, the mountains weren’t kind to unprepared wanderers. Logan couldn’t help but be concerned for the guy.“Is there any particular reason you’re walking up to my house?”

He stopped. Didn’t look up.

Logan stopped, too. “Nearest town is Destruction Bay. That way.” He pointed back down the road – opposite the way the man had been walking.

The stranger glanced up and down the worn gravel road, deftly avoiding Logan’s eyes. He paused, took a breath, turned around, and started walking back down the road.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Logan growled. Propping up his bike, he jumped off and trotted to catch up. “Listen. It gets cold up here. Really fucking cold.” No reaction. “It’s freakishly warm for April right now, but a cold wind’s coming in. You won’t make it into town today.” The bastard just kept walking. “I won’t let you.”

That got a reaction: the sour-broken man flinched and stumbled away, off the side of the road.

“Not like that.” Logan sighed. “I don’t want you dying on my road, you stubborn jackass,” he declared.

Hesitation.

“Look at me.”

He flinched. The sour smell flared.

“Please. I’m not going to hurt you, I swear.” Logan tried to smile. It probably looked horrible.

The stranger glanced up, then back at his feet. He gnawed his lip for a moment, then looked up again, meeting Logan’s gaze.

_Christ. What the hell happened to this guy?_

He had big, deep brown eyes, empty of everything but defeat and misery. After a long second of eye contact, his brow furrowed and he looked away, shaking his head slowly.

Barely thinking about it, Logan shrugged off his leather coat and the jacket underneath, which he held out to him. “Here.”

The empty-eyed man glanced back and forth between Logan and the fleece-lined denim jacket.

“Come on. Take it.”

A trembling hand reached out and grabbed it. The sour smell began to fade.

“Go ahead. Put it on.” Logan winced at the strange man’s confusion. “One sleeve at a time, you know.” He demonstrated with exaggerated motions, putting his leather coat back on.

Trembling and clutching the baggy waist of his jeans with one hand at a time, the sour-broken man pulled on the jacket and clumsily fastened the buttons.

“There you go. Now, how about you let me drive you up to my place, and I’ll take you down to town in the morning? I’d take you tonight, but once is too many times for one day for me already.” Logan tried to smile again. It felt better this time.

The broken man’s mouth twitched, and he looked at the motorcycle hesitantly.

“I’m not going to crash,” Logan promised. “Really.” He strolled back to his bike. Climbing on, he grinned with relief when he felt the other man climb up behind him. “You’re gonna want to hold on to something,” he warned.

Stick-thin arms wrapped around Logan, hesitant, with pale hands.

As the motorcycle roared back up the mountain, the hands clutched his jacket, a muddy forehead buried itself in the leather between his shoulder blades, and Logan could feel his unexpected passenger shaking with emotion.

He sighed inwardly. _What the hell do you think you’re doing, Logan? This guy needs help, not an amnesiac freak who lives like a hermit._ Traces and fragments of toothy grins, gunpowder, soft candlelight, and wild roses danced through his head, flashing bright and instantly forgotten.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions, huckleberry jam, and a surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: suicide attempt mentioned
> 
> I have played with the dates of canon events a bit. Logan takes down the Three Mile Island facility in 2001. Four years later, he meets Bruce in ‘Wandered.’ I have altered the Banner timeline: his gamma experiment is still in 2003, but I am placing the events of The Incredible Hulk in fall 2004, so there goes Fury’s Big Week. Oh, well. As ElvenSorceress says in the notes for her ‘Myogenic Contractions of the Cardiac Cycle’ (which is awesome and her Bruce is perfect), “Norton's character (IMHO) doesn't act like he's been dealing with Hulk-ness for five years. It seems closer to one maybe two years at most.”
> 
> Logan’s a bit OOC compared to X1. He hasn’t had the full fifteen years to get used to the amnesia problem. Basically, he lacks experience covering up his own uncertainties; he’s not as cynical. Even given that, it’s still strange for him to be the talkative one in a conversation.

**Logan’s ~~Cabin~~ One-Room Shack**

**Yukon Territory, Canada**

“Not much to look at, I know,” Logan admitted. “Had to get a roof over my head quick before winter set in. Might fix it up this summer.” _Might not._ Claiming territory like this still didn’t feel right. Something was missing. Good to have his own space, though, even if it was only for the one winter. _So why am I bringing a stray whatever-he-is here?_

The strange broken-scented man didn’t seem to mind rough-hewn timber construction with mud-patched gaps in the walls. He moved easier now. More alive. His eyes darted around to take in every detail, wary. That unnerving sourness welled up again, paired with a low fear-scent.

 _Right. Guest. What now?_ Logan set down his supplies from town, careful not to get between the nervous probably-mutant and the door. “Hungry? There’s nothing warm, but” he rummaged through his shelf of canned and jarred fruits and vegetables, pulling out something at random “here. Eat this.”

He took the jar hesitantly, flinching back as if expecting an attack.

“Not gonna hurt you,” Logan repeated. _Probably going to take a while for that to set in. You don’t get like this without being betrayed somehow._ How Logan knew that was a mystery to him. On the other hand, being stranded on an island in the middle of a wrecked nuclear power plant with no memory did suggest a failure of trust happening at some point. _Doesn’t matter,_ he tried to tell himself. _You’re here now. So who the hell is this guy?_

His guest glanced back and forth between him and the jar a few times before unscrewing the lid and dropping it on the raw slab of wood that served Logan as a table. He gnawed on his lip a moment, then snatched up a spoon and dug in. With the lid off, he caught the scent of huckleberry jam. _Good. He’d think I was crazy if it was a jar of pickled eggs or something._

The first taste made him close his eyes and make a quiet happy noise. By the second spoonful, he was watching Logan again with a cautiously grateful expression. “Thanks,” he whispered hoarsely.

“So you can talk.” Grabbing some venison jerky for himself, Logan sat, carefully not watching his guest too closely.

 “Yeah. Uh. Hi?” He sounded out of practice with the idea of having a conversation.

They had that in common. Logan thought about offering a handshake, but the odd man would probably flinch at any movement in his direction. “The name’s Logan.”

Hesitation. “Bruce.”

The two ate in awkward silence and tried not to meet each other’s eyes. Bruce finished his jam, spoon scraping out the last few bits from the bottom of the jar. He glanced back and forth between the empty jar and Logan several times.

“Why?” The question broke the awkward silence, but it only heightened the tension in the air.

Logan knew exactly what Bruce was asking. He didn’t want to think about the answer. “Why what?”

“Why are you helping me?”

 _Instinct?_ He hadn’t thought about it all that much. It had seemed like the thing to do. Fragments of memory drifted past, just out of reach. “It’s a long story.”

Bruce looked down, turning the empty jar over in his hand. “If you don’t want to tell me…”

“I do. I would. I can’t.” _You can’t tell a story that you’ve forgotten._ “The short version is I know what it’s like to be the cold and hungry mutant lost on the side of a road.” There. True, and almost an explanation.

“ **I** am **not** a- Wait, did you say?” Sourness peaked, then dropped off. Bruce paused for a moment, staring. “You are, aren’t you?”

“Yup.” Logan smirked. “So are you. I can tell.”

The broken-scented man leaned forward, squinting at him. “How? I mean, what do you- but I’m really not a, um, mutant. Exactly. Huh. Never thought of it like that.”

 _So it’s complicated. Figures. Weird scent, weird guy._ “I have a good nose. Knew you had to be a mutant. Or… something.”

Bruce snorted. “Or something. Let’s go with that, okay?”

“Sure.”

The other man stared at him, brow furrowed. “So, your mutation is that you can, uh, smell mutations?”

Logan bit a chunk off of another piece of jerky, considering just how much he wanted to reveal. “Not mutations. Or not just them, anyway. I’ve got a better nose than I should, which includes a lot of scents. And my hearing’s not bad. I’m stronger, quicker than a regular human.” _No need to mention claws just yet. He’s twitchy enough without knowing I’m always armed._

“Improved senses and physical fitness, affinity for rural areas. That sounds like a feral-type mutation. Those are supposed to be really rare.” Bruce squinted curiously.

 _There are types?_ “You know a lot about mutants, Bruce?” Logan wasn’t sure that was a good thing. He hadn’t sounded too happy about calling himself one.

“Uh, no. Not really. I work- heh, worked on a project that was, uh, trying to find a way to, to augment soldiers? Mutants have interesting traits. Stable expression of stuff like that- it’s pretty interesting, so I read a bit on the subject. No one knows a lot about mutants, though,” he admitted. Then made a face like he hadn’t meant to say so much.

“You’re a scientist?” That could be a problem. _Wait. Why is that a problem?_

Bruce shook his head sharply. “Not anymore.” He stated it with a finality that warned against more questions on the subject.

 _Okay. What does that mean?_ Logan searched for something to say, then gave into the most obvious one. “So what were you doing out here in the first place?”

“Um.” He gulped. Shuddered. Gnawed on his lip. “I, I was, uh. I tried to kill myself. It… didn’t go as planned.”

 _Oh. Shit. Don’t ask why. Don’t ask why._ Things had been bad these four years, but Logan hadn’t ever gotten that low. Not that ending himself would be easy, considering the healing. Logan watched Bruce stare at the empty jam jar for a few minutes before he could work up the courage to ask, “Are you gonna try again?”

“No.” Brown eyes shone bright with unshed tears.

“Good.” Logan met his gaze and did his best to look sympathetic. “Seems like a waste to do something like that. You’re a decent guy.”

Bruce chuckled darkly. “You have no idea how ironic that is.” He shook his head again, shifting from one foot to the other.

Bare feet. _Probably cold._ Logan sighed.

A battered duffel bag in one corner held his small collection of clothing: mostly warm things, patched but solid. Down in the bottom, he found a thick pair of hand-knit woolen socks. He tossed them to sour-broken Bruce, who dodged the incoming missile with a yelp.

“Fuck. Sorry. I didn’t mean-”

Sprawled on the packed dirt floor, Bruce shivered, tense, sourness and fear bursting to fill the entire cabin, eyes wide and green and _wait. Green?_

_Bright green eyes that should be brown_

_“Or something. Let’s go with that, okay?”_

_A broken smell, pieces that don’t fit_

_“a way to, to augment soldiers”_

_Sour inhuman scent coupled with fear_

_“a scientist?” “Not anymore.”_

_“Wilbur said there were trees thrown all over the place. Whole trees! And footprints, big monster footprints everywhere!”_

_News of destruction in New York, a huge green beast tore apart Harlem_

_Well damn. This not what I expected the Hulk to look like._ “I should’ve warned you I was about to do that. Sorry.”

Bruce flinched, wrung his hands and curled up on himself, muttering, “No, it’s okay. Don’t, don’t apologize. I’m kinda nervous right now?” Sourness _Hulk-smell?_ dropped, lingering with fear and shame. He picked up the unintended missile. “Are these socks?”

“Yeah.” Hiding his shock as best as he could, Logan shrugged. “Keep ‘em.”

The not-always-monster blinked up at him, confused, as if kindness was a foreign idea. “Uh. Okay.”

“They’re too small for me. The lady who runs the store in town, she gave them to me for Christmas. Better you wear them than I throw them out.” _Oh great. Now you’re rambling._

“Thanks. Again.” Bruce frowned at the grime covering his feet. He halfheartedly brushed the worst of it off and pulled the socks on. Then he smiled, and Logan couldn’t help but smile back.

_What? I don’t- he’s the fucking Hulk. I should not be-_

“You don’t have to keep thanking me.” Logan didn’t think before saying it, his voice soft and comforting.

Bruce nodded uncertainly.

The unnerved mutant sighed. “I need to go cover up the bike before it starts snowing. If you’re still hungry, go ahead and take whatever you want.” He walked out the door before his apologetic guest could object to the offer.

The cabin was off the road a ways. Logan trudged down the familiar path, lost in thought.

_Sudden fear and unnerving sourness welling up together_

_“Why?” “Why are you helping me?”_

_out of practice with the idea of having a conversation_

_“You’re a decent guy.” a dark chuckle. “You have no idea how ironic that is.”_

_“I tried to kill myself. It… didn’t go as planned.”_

Logan gulped. _Fuck. That’s why._ All of his instincts labeled Bruce as quiet, gentle, a thinking man, not a fighting one. _If he turns into… that… when he’s scared, I almost understand why he’d want it to be over._ The newspapers yelled about the Hulk’s rampages for a month. Given Logan's unfounded certainty that the American military would never let something like the Hulk out of their control, the poor guy was probably terrified all of the time.

Which would make him turn big and green.

Which would end with mayhem and death.

Which would bring in the army.

Which would scare Bruce.

And then it would all start over again and again.

_And here I thought I had it bad._

Logan reached the motorcycle and retrieved its tarp from the branch of a nearby tree. Covering the bike served a dual purpose: it protected the bike from the weather, and it camouflaged the obvious marker of the path up to his place. Tying down the tarp was routine enough that it barely distracted him from his train of thought.

He shouldn’t be sad for Bruce. He shouldn’t want to keep him safe. The Hulk was the biggest, baddest predator on the planet, and he should be desperate to stay away. He should be afraid.

But it wasn’t fair.

Every part of Logan agreed. His heart ached for Bruce’s loneliness and loathed the Americans for their betrayal. His instincts screamed about protection and the security of gaining a strong ally. Shreds of memory threaded through his outrage: the pressure of tropical heat, the cries of innocent victims. His limited experience with humans and that elusive thing they called ‘normality’ might be pointing out the possible dangers, but in his own mind, he had never agreed with them. For the first time since he woke up alone in the rubble, he wasn’t conflicted.

Bruce deserved better than this.

Settled into his goal, he walked back up to the cabin. No one else would look out for Bruce, so Logan would. It was that simple.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I expected Logan to be more cautious about the whole Hulk thing, but he decided to jump right in, so I went with it. *shrug*


End file.
